Great part of the men and women that are cast by the will of God into the world, go about seeking a mere match of some kind. For most of them, if not exactly anything, very nearly anything will do. It matters not what is the first thing that links their affections to another, whether beauty, or similar thoughts, or similar tastes, or circumstances, or proprieties, or follies, or accidents; one or two slight causes combining is sufficient to produce the effect; the words are spoken, the altar gives its sanction, the ring encircles the finger, the white ribbons and the orange blossom, the smiles and gaiety, are worn and pass away, and the union settles down into tranquil happiness, continual irritation, fierce strife, or speedy rupture, as the temper, the passions, and the principles of the parties impel or bind them. But there are others, however, of a finer clay, and a higher mould, who form, at a very early period, a bright ideal image of the being that must be their soul's companion, in which every trait and feature is made harmonious, (to use boldly a mixed figure,) to the pre-existing tones of their own heart; where each taste, each feeling, each thought, finds a responsive note in the spirit of another, and where the corporeal form represents but as a symbol, that grand quintessence of all that we desire in the heart of the being that we love. Seldom, very seldom does it happen in life, that those who have thus, if I may so call it, preconceived their love, ever find the being they have dreamt of. Seldom, if they do find her, is it their fate to win her; but if they do, they may well die the day after, for they have known enough of human joy to fill up a whole existence. Seldom do they find her; they may find the face and the form, but the one harmonious whole is rare--oh, how rare! The mines of Golconda do not furnish fewer diamonds, the river of Ceylon roll down fewer rubies, than the whole world produces, ay, in a thousand years, of beings fully worthy to be loved. Morley Ernstein was one of those who had formed for himself the picture of her who was to be his; and, as we have shewn the reader, he had once seen the face of his visions. Whether the mind was there he knew not, but that face was ever present to his memory, and it was not that of Helen Barham. Bright, and beautiful, and sunny as she was, he might feel passion towards her, pity, tenderness, esteem--but no, not love! There was a something wanting still; I cannot well tell what, and will not seek to do so, for love is like one of those fine elixirs, which some skilful and life-restoring hands have formed, and which we may analyze as we will, separating the parts with every scientific aid, but still something escapes, which we cannot discover, something which gives virtue and efficacy to the whole.